“Oh my God,” he said, blinking at nothing as the pieces fell into place. He glanced up at his dad. “Do you think it’s possible to make a problem where there isn’t one because everything feels too anticlimactic if you don’t?”
“What on earth are you talking about, son?” Jude’s dad asked.
Embarrassment started to seep in around the edges of Jude’s realizations. “Nally and I have been together for years.”
“I thought you just said you weren’t and that you only just started dating,” his dad said. “Now I’m confused.”
Jude stood, walking through the closet that separated his office from his boudoir, his dad following. “I’m so stupid,” he said, mostly to himself. “We’re so stupid. I can’t believe we missed it.”
“Whatever it is, it must be easy to miss,” his dad said as Jude grabbed his coat from the antique coat stand he had in the corner. “I’m missing it, too.”
Jude twisted to face his dad as he shrugged into his coat, his long-missing smile returning. “Nally and I have been a couple for years, just like everyone has assumed,” he said. “I don’t know when we started dating, but whenever it was, we completely missed the start.”
“And?” his dad asked, following him out to the hall.
“And when push came to shove and we couldn’t escape how together we are any longer, the whole not having a clear starting point thing was so disorienting that we panicked.”
“That doesn’t make an ounce of sense,” his dad said as they headed downstairs.
“It does to me, and it will make sense to Nally,” Jude said, his confidence growing by the second. “We haven’t been panicking because we think we’ll lose each other if we start dating, we’vebeen dating for years and we’re panicking because we’re only just realizing it now.”
“Still doesn’t add up to me,” his dad said with a sigh as they headed toward the kitchen, where Jude grabbed the keys to his car.
“Nally and I are silly buggers,” he said with a broad grin.
“That I understand,” his dad said, matching his smile. “I never had any doubt. Especially about the buggers part.”
“I love you, Dad,” Jude said, surging in to give his dad a hug before dashing on toward the back door. “I’ll probably spend the night at Nally’s tonight. I might not ever come back.”
“Thank God!” his dad called after him. “At last!”
Jude laughed. Finally, things were beginning to make sense to him. Timothy wasn’t the problem, he and Nally were the problem. They’d invented a problem between the two of them so they could have something to panic abouttogether. The panic was the point. It was the thing they shared, the thing that put them on the same page and gave their realization of being in love with each other an exclamation point that made it special. And it had to be special to them. It couldn’t just be the thing that everyone had known and assumed for so long that it didn’t matter. They couldn’t just ease into it, the two of them needed to start with a bang.
The drive out to Hawthorne House felt like it took forever. Jude timed his romantic flight into his lover’s arms terribly. He hit the tail end of the morning rush and ran into construction on the M25. It wasn’t like him at all, but he found himself honking at fellow drivers, zigging and zagging through traffic in a way that annoyed everyone else on the road and got him about three cars ahead, and shouted futilely out the windshield for no reason.
It was getting close to lunchtime by the time Jude pulled into the family parking lot for Hawthorne House. He nearly leapt outof his car, dropping his keys in the process, and stumbling on the gravel as he tried to run too fast across it.
“Have you seen Nally?” he asked Rhys Hawthorne, who he ran into, almost literally, after letting himself into the house through the family door.
“Yeah. He’s about five-ten, dark hair, often in the presence of a piano?” Rhys answered cheekily.
Jude growled and all but shouted, “Where is Nally?”
Rhys held up his hands, evidently realizing it wasn’t a time for joking. “He’s in his studio. Everything okay?”
Jude dashed down the hall toward the central part of Hawthorne House, calling over his shoulder, “We’re complete idiots!”
“I never doubted that for a moment,” Rhys shouted after him.
Jude was sure he’d laugh about it later, but in the moment, all he wanted was to find Nally, his friend, his lover, the love of his life, and explain to him how stupid they’d been.
He heard Nally before he saw him. The studio door was closed, but the most beautiful music sounded from the other side. Nally sounded like he was in his element and the music was flowing. Jude loved the sound of his man, his Nally, being so happy. He let himself into the studio without knocking, out of breath and high on love.
Nally stopped playing and whipped around to see who had interrupted him. “Mum, I told you—” His frustrated look turned to one of shock when he saw Jude. “Jude?”
“I’ve figured it out,” Jude said, unable to contain his excitement. He left the door wide open as he strode quickly across the room to the piano. “I figured it all out. I know why we’ve been so stuck with our relationship and why we’re jumping at shadows and freaking out about everything.”
“You know?” Nally asked, standing. “Because I sure as fuck don’t.”
